Thirty Out of One Million

The moment Hanbin spat out a curse out of nowhere, Kangmin, who had been fiddling with his phone beside him, looked up at Hanbin with an expression that plainly asked, 'What the hell is wrong with this kid?'

"Hey, what's gotten into you all of a sudden?"

"Hyung, we're... we're screwed."

Hanbin's voice was trembling.

"With what?"

"We're trapped in here!!"

Hanbin practically screamed, jabbing a finger at the scoreboard.

"There! You see that scoreboard, right? Those numbers up there — until every one of those digits fills up, we can't leave this place!"

Following Hanbin's gestures, Cha Kangmin traced his outstretched hand up to the scoreboard.

"Hmm... numbers? I don't see anything. What are you on about?"

Cha Kangmin replied, furrowing his brow.

"No, right there! You can't see the numbers there? There's a thirty in front and a million written behind it! We have to fill all of that before we can get out of here!"

Hanbin shouted, frustrated to his core. But Cha Kangmin's expression still read, 'What is this guy on?'

Cha Kangmin glanced back and forth between the scoreboard and Hanbin's face.

"So, what numbers? Thirty, million, whatever — I'm telling you, I don't see anything. That scoreboard's probably dead, no power."

Cha Kangmin's reaction threw Hanbin into confusion.

'Uh... what? He can't see the numbers?'

While Hanbin stood there dazed, trying to sort through his thoughts, Kangmin spoke up.

"Look, let's just head back to the dorm and get some sleep."

He gave Hanbin a light thump on the shoulder and hauled him upright.

"Uh... yeah."

Hanbin scrambled awkwardly to his feet.

Explaining any more of this situation to Cha Kangmin would only earn him the label of lunatic — that much was obvious.

Sorting through his tangled thoughts, Hanbin silently began to follow behind Cha Kangmin.

On the way back to the athletes' ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠village dormitory, nothing happened, mercifully — no invisible wall materialized to block their path, and the door wasn't locked.

The moment Hanbin stepped into the room, he let out a quiet sigh of relief.

'Thank god it doesn't look like I'll be sleeping on a gym mat like last time, after that heading practice.'

Cha Kangmin, for his part, walked into the room and immediately faceplanted onto his bed without even changing out of his clothes, dropping into a dead sleep.

That made it all the stranger — the ordinarily fastidious Kangmin would never have done such a thing.

Left alone in the room, Hanbin remained seated on his bed, lost in a blank stupor.

'The number 30 — that's what matters right now. What's this practice going to be?'

He cast his mind back over everything he'd experienced so far.

The first time, it was shooting. The second, heading.

The common thread was that both were drills he could do alone, and both were the last exercise he'd performed before getting trapped.

But the last exercise this time had been...

'1-on-1 training... and with Kangmin-hyung, of all people...'

In that instant, a single thought flashed through Hanbin's mind.

This time's training goal was 1-on-1 practice.

'... That's why Kangmin-hyung got pulled in here with me?!'

He couldn't come up with any other explanation.

1-on-1 training was, by definition, something Hanbin could absolutely never do alone.

It required a partner to practice against, no way around it.

Which meant that this dog-trash system, or whatever it was, had dragged the very person he needed to train with into this time-stopped space for the sake of the drill.

And it had set things up so that Kangmin, the training helper, couldn't see the numbers — the rule of this space.

The moment he finished organizing those thoughts, his head throbbed with a dull ache.

'Ugh, whatever. Sleep first, think later.'

His body and his mind were both exhausted.

Hanbin too gave up on thinking any further and surrendered to sleep.

"......"

"Anyway... I'm sorry about today."

The sudden sound of a familiar voice snapped Hanbin wide awake.

"...Huh?"

Where was he? He distinctly remembered falling asleep on a bed in the athletes' village dormitory...

"That match today — the way I botched it... Ugh, that bastard Mbappé is just so damn fast, I swear..."

At Kangmin's words, Hanbin jolted alert and looked around.

No matter how he looked at it, this wasn't the dormitory he'd fallen asleep in yesterday.

He checked his own clothes, and then the clothes of the Cha Kangmin standing beside him.

The simple training gear they'd changed into after the match against France ended.

And this place was the quiet walking path in the athletes' village — the very same one he'd walked down with Cha Kangmin last night.

'What... is this place right now?'

Just then, Cha Kangmin stretched both arms overhead and said,

"Hey, you good on stamina? Want to head over to the training pitch for a quick practice session?"

The exact same words, the exact same place, the exact same situation as yesterday.

"Uh... sure."

The moment Hanbin answered in a daze, Cha Kangmin nudged him along by the back, just as he had yesterday, and they headed for the training pitch.

The training grounds, too, were identical to yesterday down to the smallest detail.

The empty, deserted space. Even the soccer balls sprawled about here and there.

'No... that's not the point. The scoreboard!'

At the thought, Hanbin raised his head and looked at the scoreboard at one end of the pitch.

"Ha..."

A sigh burst out of Hanbin. The exact same numbers he'd seen at the very end yesterday.

He'd let himself hope that yesterday had all been a dream, but of course it wasn't.

"Why the sudden sigh?"

Cha Kangmin asked, puzzled.

"Hyung, that... can you see anything on that scoreboard?"

Hanbin asked, clinging to one last shred of hope.

"The scoreboard? No? What's with you? There's nothing written on it."

Cha Kangmin tilted his head as if he genuinely couldn't see a thing.

"Hhhh... Ha. Never mind. Let's just practice. You meant the 1-on-1 drills, right?"

Hanbin spoke as if resigning himself to everything.

"Oh, how'd you guess? Ever since facing Mbappé, I've felt it — that guy's world-class for a reason, his footwork's on another level. Your 1-on-1 game's still lacking too, isn't it?"

"Yeah... it is... let's do it..."

And so, fully resigned to his fate, Hanbin began 1-on-1 training with Cha Kangmin all over again.

The number on the scoreboard had finally surpassed one hundred thousand.

Three hundred 1-on-1 drills a day with Cha Kangmin meant that by now, he'd been repeating this identical day for very nearly a full year.

'Still, thank god it's not the insane number from the shooting practice — a hundred million reps.'

Hanbin breathed an internal sigh of relief.

But there was one hard limit on how much he could increase the daily practice count this time around.

His partner's stamina — Cha Kangmin's.

Which was why a thousand reps a day like the heading practice was simply impossible.

He'd tried it many times over the months. Three hundred a day was manageable, more or less, but push beyond that and Cha Kangmin would collapse from exhaustion.

Three hundred a day.

At this rate, it would take close to ten full years to escape this place.

Granted, it was some small comfort that, unlike his previous training — the lonely, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠solitary grind — he could at least hold conversations with Cha Kangmin here.

But because Kangmin's memory reset without fail to that night after the France match every time he slept, anything resembling a deep conversation was difficult.

Hanbin figured he'd heard Kangmin's sob story — "That bastard Mbappé is insane, man. You just go whoosh whoosh and the ball's already gone" — at least fifty thousand times, minimum.

By now he could recite every syllable of what Kangmin would say next, word for word, without missing a single beat.

And the permitted range within this space hadn't changed much from before, either.

The grass training pitch where they practiced now. The athletes' village dormitory. And the fitness room attached to the dormitory building.

Exactly those three places, nothing more.

He knew full well that the Olympic Village had all sorts of entertainment — a game room stocked with sponsored consoles, a movie theater, and the like — so he'd gone looking with real expectations.

But every one of those places was invariably blocked off by an invisible, transparent wall, leaving him with nothing but a view from outside.

And not even a considerate one — the maddening wall stretched all the way to the entrance itself, open right up to the doorway, as if to mock him.

The one thing he actually had to do was the book sitting in the dorm: Learn French from the Ground Up!

He remembered Kangmin buying it at the airport, and judging by how stiff the pages were — practically brand new — it had never once been opened.

And then, wandering out to the hallway, he found that Kangmin's haul hadn't stopped at beginner French — quite a variety of French language books were lined up there.

In this time-stopped space with absolutely nothing to do, learning a new language turned out to be a surprisingly decent pastime for Hanbin.

Finally, the halfway mark. It was at this point that Hanbin noticed something interesting.

Just as his own 1-on-1 skills kept climbing, his partner Cha Kangmin's skills were growing steadily right alongside them.

Maybe it was only natural. After all, 1-on-1 training ceases to be meaningful practice the moment one side overwhelms the other completely.

Early in the training, Hanbin had lost to Cha Kangmin overwhelmingly often.

The wiles and experience of Cha Kangmin — a full national team defender — had proven a tough hurdle for Hanbin, whose game was built almost entirely on raw physicality.

But around the time the 1-on-1 reps passed the 200,000 mark, the win-loss record between the two had grown nearly even.

As Hanbin's technique sharpened and his ability to read Cha Kangmin's movements improved, the duel became a genuine back-and-forth.

And when they reached 400,000 reps, the win rate finally flipped — seven to three in Hanbin's favor.

That was when it started.

Suddenly, he could feel Cha Kangmin's skill climbing at a visible pace.

Body feints that had fooled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠him just days before began failing to land, and the speed at which he reacted to hard-to-read movements grew quicker and quicker.

And now, at the 500,000 mark, that 7-to-3 win rate had evened back out to five and five — a dead-even balance once more.

'This isn't just a practice session or two — at this point, there's no question. Kangmin-hyung is genuinely getting better.'

Harboring a faint hope that maybe some part of Cha Kangmin's memory was carrying over, Hanbin tried broaching the subject a few times.

But without fail, the next day, Cha Kangmin's memory reset right back to that night after the France match.

'His skill goes up... but his memory resets... what IS this?'

Hanbin practiced himself half to death, while Kangmin just slept and woke up stronger.

Sure, Cha Kangmin couldn't remember any of it — but from where Hanbin stood, it felt painfully unfair.

The end of nearly ten years of time was finally within sight.

Only a single repetition remained.

Hanbin placed the ball at his feet for the last time and approached Cha Kangmin, who was waiting in front of it.

They'd been drilling just moments before, so Cha Kangmin, without a word, sank into a low stance and waited for Hanbin's next move.

Hanbin rolled the ball slowly under his sole, letting his body tilt slightly to the left in a feint.

Then he nudged the ball with his right foot and tried to burst past.

But Cha Kangmin, whose skill had grown right alongside Hanbin's own, was no longer fooled by ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠such simple feints.

Kangmin read Hanbin's movement and spun his body around instantly, latching onto the ball.

But that was exactly what Hanbin had been setting up all along.

Hanbin gathered the ball in once more, dropped back a step, and this time flicked it lightly — straight through the narrow gap between Cha Kangmin's legs.

Then he whisked himself around Kangmin's side and broke through clean.

"Ha...! Damn it, nutmegged, right here at the end."

Leaving Cha Kangmin's indignant voice behind him, Hanbin raised his head and looked up at the scoreboard.

"Ha..."

Hanbin flopped backward onto the grass right where he stood.

A sigh of relief surged up from somewhere deep in his chest.

'It's finally... over...'

His exhausted body felt heavy as lead, but his heart was lighter than it had ever been.

Cha Kangmin, watching Hanbin sprawled out on the grass, wandered over and grumbled,

"Hey, let's call it and go sleep already. We've got France today, and you're still training? You're gonna kill me, man."

The voice telling him to head back to the dorm — the one he'd heard a million times by now.

That tiresome, worn-out line, in this single moment, sounded sweeter than anything else in the world.

"Yes, sir!"

Hanbin sprang upright and answered.

The two of them walked out of the training pitch side by side and followed the familiar path back to the dormitory.

The moment they reached the room, Cha Kangmin — true to form — collapsed straight onto his bed and plunged into a deep sleep.

Hanbin, too, lowered himself onto his own bed.

'Please... let tomorrow morning find me waking up on this bed, not on that walking path...'

How much time had passed?

Beep-beep-beep — beep-beep-beep —

An unfamiliar alarm rang out through the room.

Wincing at the strange sound, Hanbin slowly opened his eyes.

"Ha..."

The first thing to greet Hanbin's freshly woken eyes was, mercifully, not that walking path he'd grown sick of staring at over the past ten years.

Blank white wallpaper. It was unmistakably the ceiling of the athletes' village dormitory.

"Hnnnngh—!"

Sitting up in bed, Hanbin stretched both arms skyward in a long, full-body stretch.

He was back. Finally.